Painter

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns is an American artist whose paintings rework familiar signs such as flags, targets, numbers, and maps through encaustic and collage.

Jasper Johns quick facts

Johns’s Neo-Dada work drew on Marcel Duchamp’s ideas from Dada, using familiar signs and everyday objects to question what painting represents.

Jasper Johns quick facts
Full name	Jasper Johns
Born	May 15, 1930 · Augusta, Georgia, U.S.
Died	—
Nationality	American
Movements	Neo-Dada and Pop Art
Paint types	Encaustic paint · Oil paint · Metallic paint · Acrylic paint · Watercolor · Gouache
Other media	Collage · drawing · printmaking · sculpture
Other materials	Plaster · found objects
Painting surfaces	Canvas · Paper · Wood · Fabric · Plywood · Plaster · Metal
Painting methods	Hot-wax encaustic over newspaper and cloth, metallic-luster paint on rayon, and later acrylic and water-based media over collaged prints
Common subjects	American flags, targets, numbers, letters, maps, body impressions, and everyday objects
Notable works	Flag, Target with Four Faces, Three Flags, and Map

Sources: Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA: Flag, MoMA: Target with Four Faces, MoMA: Untitled (2001 series), National Gallery of Art: Numbers, MoMA: Painted Bronze, National Gallery of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago: Jasper Johns: Gray.

Paint types used by Jasper Johns

Johns layered oil and encaustic over collage, used metallic paint on fabric, and later combined acrylic, watercolor, and gouache on paper in later works.

Encaustic paint

Johns built Flag (1954–55) with oil, hot-wax encaustic, and newspaper-and-cloth collage on fabric mounted to plywood. He dipped strips of cloth and newsprint in pigmented wax and fixed them over a drawn flag. Target with Four Faces (1955) likewise uses encaustic over newspaper and cloth, creating a tactile target beneath plaster casts; the plaster is sculptural material, not paint.
Oil paint

Oil is documented alongside encaustic in Flag (1954–55). Johns used it on a very different object for Painted Bronze (1960), applying oil color to a cast-bronze replica of two beer cans. The bronze is the support, while the painted surface complicates the distinction between an ordinary object and a sculpture.
Metallic paint

The National Gallery of Art records Numbers (1966) as metallic-luster paint with graphite wash on nonwoven viscose rayon. The paint's reflective finish and the graphite marks share a thin textile-like support; neither metallic leaf nor encaustic is listed as a material in this work.
Acrylic paint

MoMA's Untitled (2001) is a series of thirteen related works on paper using acrylic, collage, watercolor, gouache, aquatint, and etching. Johns painted and drew over repurposed prints and cut-and-pasted elements, making the acrylic one part of a deliberately mixed technique rather than a substitute for the wax-based surfaces of his 1950s paintings.
Watercolor paint

In the same thirteen-part Untitled series (2001), watercolor is documented with acrylic and gouache. The water-based passages belong to layered works on paper, not to a conventional oil-on-canvas flag; the printmaking techniques MoMA lists are separate from the painting media.
Gouache paint

Johns also used opaque gouache in the 2001 Untitled works on paper. MoMA identifies it alongside watercolor, acrylic, and collaged print fragments; that combination shows how his later drawn and painted variations differed materially from the earlier encaustic targets. MoMA’s materials list makes this combination explicit.

Sources: MoMA: Flag, encaustic, oil, and collage, MoMA: Target with Four Faces, MoMA: Painted Bronze, oil on bronze, National Gallery of Art: Numbers, metallic-luster paint, and MoMA: 2001 Untitled series, acrylic, gouache, and watercolor.

Painting surfaces used by Jasper Johns

Records identify Jasper Johns’ use of canvas, paper, and wood, with named examples below showing how each support functions in the finished work.

Canvas

Johns used encaustic, oil, and collage on canvas in Flag and Target with Four Faces. The beeswax-based paint and attached newspaper give these works a built surface rather than a smooth illusionistic image. MoMA documents canvas as the support for these early paintings.
Paper

Johns made a sustained body of works on paper, including his 2001 untitled compositions in acrylic, gouache, and watercolor. These sheets carry the same repeated signs and shapes as his paintings, but in a smaller format that lets different water-based media coexist.
Wood

Johns painted on wood and attached objects to wooden supports in works such as Target with Four Faces. The rigid panel carries both the painted target and sculptural elements, linking the support to the work’s real object rather than a depicted target alone.
Fabric

Johns has used fabric within painted and collaged works, incorporating material with its own texture into the image. These examples distinguish a fabric component or support from his usual canvas paintings and show how he treated everyday materials as part of a composition.
Plywood

Johns’s documented plywood works use a manufactured wooden panel as the rigid support for painted compositions. Its visible edges and planar structure sit within his broader interest in signs and objects, making the material itself part of the work rather than an invisible backing.
Plaster

In Target with Four Faces, Johns incorporated plaster casts of body parts above the painted target. The plaster is a three-dimensional painted element attached to the canvas composition, not a flat support; the work makes that material distinction central to its structure.
Metal

Johns painted bronze objects, including the cast Painted Bronze, which MoMA records as oil on bronze. The metal is the surface of a three-dimensional object rather than a stretched support, extending his interest in recognizable forms and the boundary between painting and sculpture.